


Serving

by SylvanWitch



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Canon Relationship, M/M, episode-related
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-27
Updated: 2012-10-27
Packaged: 2017-11-17 02:58:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/546907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SylvanWitch/pseuds/SylvanWitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He doesn't want to be remembered for his coffee.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Serving

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by temporal_witch, who mused about what I might do with the events of "Countrycide." Here's my answer. 
> 
> Also, this story is canon except for one detail on which I've gone AU, and that is that in my version of events, Ianto already knows about Jack's immortality. 
> 
> Finally, I'm picking up where my own 'verse left off in "London Burning," which assumes that Jack and Ianto shared their first kiss before the events of "Cyberwoman." You don't need to have read that one to understand this one, however.

Ianto Jones makes coffee.

 

Sometimes, he thinks that will be his epitaph.

 

And then he remembers that if (when) he dies in the service of Torchwood, there will be no headstone at all, and he feels strangely the better for it, lighter somehow.

 

He doesn’t want to be remembered for his coffee.

 

Still, as he grinds the beans and prepares the press, he considers why it is that his coffee is so renowned (though only among the privileged few who’ve sacrificed their peace of mind and sleepless hours to this cold, dim tomb).  

  
The beans come from far away, a process out of his hands entirely, though he knows what to pick and why, knows the color that means they’ve roasted just long enough, knows the scent, the way a darkness, like loamy rain forest floors, hangs at the back of the tongue on the inhale.

 

He knows how long to let it brew, how to balance milk and dark, what precise shade of caramel means that it’s too sweet for Owen, not sweet enough for Gwen.

 

Knows, too, by the way Jack’s hand grips the mug after the first sip whether or not he’s gotten it right.

 

Ianto thinks it’s no mistake that there’s no coffee too strong for Jack, like the captain takes it as a challenge for Ianto to try, or as if the beans themselves defy Jack’s timelessness.

 

He knows he’s being ridiculous, focuses again on the way his hands work on the steam lever, the way his fingers arrange things on the tray, just so.

 

There is in his nature something that does not allow imperfection.  Not because it means he himself is flawless—there is a list in his head with exactly one name that proves the degree of his failure—but because such precision fools others into forgetting his mistakes.

 

Others who are not Jack, of course, the ultimate Other, who knows.

 

Knows Ianto.

 

And not just in the biblical sense.

 

Take, for instance, their disastrous game of kiss-and-tell.  Ianto had never been good at those sorts of things, not when he was twelve nor when he was twenty.

 

In fact, until Lisa there had been few enough to count on one hand who could say what Ianto tasted like with any degree of certainty.

 

And then there was only Lisa.

 

Until Jack.

 

The second time Jack had kissed Ianto, he must have tasted like ash and blood, the flavor of regret, perhaps an acquired taste for Jack, perhaps even old news.

 

Ianto knows that he isn’t first in any way for Jack.  Jack’s firsts are all much older than Ianto will ever be.

 

Jack had looked at him during that little al fresco, juvenile tableau, and Ianto had felt known in a way that had him looking right back at Jack, bold and unflinching, hoping for some reciprocal understanding.

  
That understanding had only come much later, though, and at a price Ianto couldn’t have dreamt of paying.

 

His hands shake as he sets a mug on the tray, spilling coffee on the otherwise spotless silver.  He curses inwardly, takes a deep breath, uses a towel to sop up the mess.

 

Something about the way the brown stain spreads over the white linen makes him shake harder, and he tosses it away like it’s full of contagion, tries once more to master his breathing.

 

A hand on his startles him and he lets out a breath like a gasp.

 

“Let me help?”

 

Jack has the courtesy to make it a question, like he’s giving Ianto a choice, and Ianto nods, looking down and away, not wanting Jack to see what’s in his eyes.

 

Horror.  Fear.  A sense that at the edges of his hearing there are carrion birds calling and trapped foxes screaming in the dark.

 

“Have you gotten any sleep?”

 

Conversational, like Jack isn’t asking something else, something about Ianto’s resiliency, his ability to cope.

 

He won’t be treated like a child.

 

Taking the tray in suddenly steady hands, Ianto meets Jack’s eyes, and Jack makes the practiced “after you” gesture he’s so good at.  Despite that it’s in jest, it has the opposite effect, reminding Ianto that his captain must have used that same sweeping motion when it was first in style.  It makes him feel self-conscious, but he hides it in his carriage, in the way he negotiates the steps with ease and sets the tray down without rocking the dark liquid in its white cup.

 

Ianto steps back and reaches for the mug, planning to hand it to Jack, but Jack has a different idea, and their hands tangle on the porcelain handle, jittering the cup against the smooth silver, sloshing its contents onto the tray again.

 

He realizes he’s left his towel on the floor of the hub and looks for another suitable sop, but Jack’s already bringing the dripping cup to his lips, licking the edge of the mug with his tongue in a slow, deliberate gesture.

  
Ianto tears his eyes away and tries not to think of how hot the cup must feel beneath that sensitive flesh.

 

Or how his sensitive flesh would feel beneath that hot tongue.

 

His breathing is ragged once more, and he turns to leave the office.

 

“Ianto.”

 

How hard can it be to say those two, elided syllables without inflecting sex?

 

“Stay a minute?”

 

Again, Jack demands like he’s asking, and again, Ianto obeys.

 

He’d stand at attention like he’s seen Unit do if it weren’t for what the motion would do to the line of his suit.  While Jack sets his mug down on the wet silver tray, Ianto settles for fastening his eyes on the middle distance and assuming an expression of indifferent waiting.

 

Jack enjoys assumptions.  Too late, Ianto remembers that.

 

His captain is touching the sore place on his cheekbone, three fingers pressing gently but with an insistence meant to raise a reaction from Ianto.

 

He resists only in the space between one breath and the next and then lets the flinch come out with a hiss.

 

“Tosh says you were very brave.”

 

From anyone else, it would sound patronizing.

 

Ianto leans back a little, out of the orbit of Jack’s considerable pull, to see that his captain’s expression is perfectly serious, not even a hint of mockery on his lips.

 

The fingers have traveled now to his own lips, one corner an angry swell, where he was struck repeatedly, the inside of his mouth there a raw ruin that makes him shiver to run his tongue over.

 

He doesn’t even try not to jerk under Jack’s less than tender exploration.

 

“You distracted him so he wouldn’t hurt her.”

 

He tries to shake his head but finds that he cannot move, for Jack’s fingers have gripped his chin as his captain makes a minute inspection of the split above his right eye and the fine sutures Owen had put there for him, replacing the less precise field work of the emergency respondent.

 

It wasn’t like that.  Not at all.  Ianto wasn’t brave, he was terrified.  He only wanted to escape, only wanted to get away from the stench of rotten meat and the horrid inhumanity in the eyes of their captors.  He’d been a cornered animal strangling on his own gagging breath, that’s all.

 

But Jack doesn’t give him the chance to confess to his cowardice.  Cupping Ianto’s face gently with the tips of the fingers of both hands now, Jack leans in and breathes a kiss across his bruised cheek.

 

Ianto’s eyes flutter shut with the heat of it, and he knows what comes next, wants it in a way that makes him trap his breath in his throat against a moan.

 

Jack’s breath presages the wet lap of his tongue against Ianto’s bruised lips, and he opens enough to let his captain in.

 

He brings his hands up to grip Jack’s wrists.  He feels the delicate tendons beneath his grip and tightens his hands against the way the slide of Jack’s tongue makes him open his mouth wider, tearing the barely-healed wound there and making him bleed.

 

This time, he does moan, into the wet heat of Jack’s mouth.  Jack deepens the kiss until they both taste of blood, until Ianto can no longer tell which of them it’s hurting to kiss like this.

 

When Jack pulls back, his lips are stained a darker red, and Ianto marvels for a moment at the beauty of it before his captain completes the blessing and plants a sucking kiss over the sutures on his brow.

 

It stings and brings a surprised sound from him, and Jack pulls back, laughing a little unsteadily and not looking directly at him, putting the desk between them and sitting down before Ianto can register more than the coolness of the space his captain had just occupied.

 

“Thanks for the coffee,” Jack says, reaching for the cup once more.

 

Ianto nods, says, “You’re welcome,” and leaves behind the messy tray, the already too-cool coffee, his captain’s enigmatic, unreadable gaze.

 

At the bottom of the stairs, still ringing from his hasty retreat, he runs into Owen, almost literally.

 

Owen’s swift glance of recognition turns sharp, and for a crazy moment Ianto thinks that the doctor is going to kiss his brow, too, so closely is he inspecting it.

 

“You’ve got some blood here,” Owen notes, voice abstract the way it gets when he’s working.  “Come down to the lab, let me clean it up, make sure the sutures are holding,” he adds, turning to lead the way to his inner sanctum.

 

“No,” Ianto stammers.  “It’s fine,” startling a look of speculation out of Owen, who’s far too shrewd by half for all his shallow talk of pints and tail.

 

Owen’s eyes narrow as they take in Ianto’s trajectory, realizing where he’s come from. 

 

“Thanks anyway,” Ianto adds politely, moving past.  He can feel Owen’s smirk between his shoulder blades and finds suddenly that he doesn’t care.

 

He smiles, feeling the sting of where the corner of his mouth was broken open again, and runs his tongue along it, glad now of the shiver it brings, and wonders if the captain would like a second cup of coffee.  
  



End file.
